U.S. Blues

“Son of a gun, better change your act

We’re all confused, what’s to lose,

You can call this the United States Blues.”

         Grateful Dead, “U.S. Blues”

Ray Smock posted,The Truth Emerges: Bob Woodward’s, “Fear: Trump in the White House”:

  This is not an easy book to read. Not that the language is a problem. Woodward’s narrative on the chaos inside the Trump White House is top-notch professional reporting. We would expect nothing less from this distinguished journalist.

  The book is hard to read because it is so painful. There is no let-up in the account of the president’s ineptitude and lies. There is no comedy relief in this book. This story is an unmitigated tragedy. It is uncomfortable to read, even for those of us who follow the Trump presidency closely and think our hide has been toughened now that we are more than 600 days into the Trump presidency.

  Trump seems incapable of shame. His lies don’t bother him. He may not even see them as lies. And some of those Woodward interviewed believe Trump can’t help himself. It seems to be in his DNA somewhere. Gary Cohn, Trump’s economic adviser, until he left the White House, kindly called Trump a “professional liar.”Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, used the vernacular,“Trump is a f**king liar.”

Journal of Urban History editor David Goldfield, like Smock an old friend from Maryland grad school days and Wobblies softball teammate, knowing I’d published “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” soon after we collaborated on “The Enduring Ghetto: Sources and Readings,” asked me to review an article about the Progressive reformer’s work on behalf of creating small parks in New York City.  I strongly recommended the article and had only a few suggestions to improve it, including better opening and closing paragraphs.  Here is part of my critique: 

      The article might begin with this anecdote, in the author’s words, taken from James B. Lane’s “Jacob A. Riis and the American City”: “The formal opening of Mulberry Bend park took place on 15 June 1897.  Despite his eight-year struggle toward this end, Riis received no invitation to attend the dedication.  He had argued with city officials about trespass signs which forbade residents from walking on the grass. In fact, one day he had disobeyed the edict, and a policeman put a cane to his back and ordered him off. Attending the ceremonial opening with Lincoln Steffens, Riis noted with pleasure that policemen allowed the thousands of spectators to gather on the grass to hear the band and speeches by politicians and community leaders.  The moment he cherished most, however, was when Colonel George E. Waring led the crowd in saluting Jacob Riis with three cheers.”(see also New York Sun, 16 June 1897; Riis, The Making of an American, pp. 283-4)  Regarding the author’s account of the Mulberry Bend fight, I suggest he move the information in a footnote about a deadly accident involving two children to the main body of the paper (go for maximum emotional impact, as Jacob Riis would have wanted it).  

    On Riis and ethnic stereotypes, mentioned on page 5 and footnote 35, the Danish-American’s attitude evolved, especially after interacting with Southern and Central European immigrants at Jacob A. Riis Settlement and becoming friends with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. 

    I’d also suggest a concluding paragraph mentioning Riis’s work in his later years on behalf of providing slum children with healthy, open air spaces, such as supporting the Jacob A. Riis Settlement, the Fresh Air Fund, the Boy Scouts, Sea Breeze Tuberculosis Hospital, and other Progressive endeavors of that ilk.  In line with Riis’s belief in the curative powers of fresh air and sunlight, it might be fitting to mention that in his later years Riis frequented spas and sanitariums for his health and purchased a money-draining potato farm in Massachusetts. 

A woman has come forward to accuse Trump’s Supreme Court nominee of sexual battery when he was 17 and stumbling drunk. Republicans are crying foul but used similar tactics 20 years ago when they impeached Clinton on smarmy stories and innuendoes.  Heartless Trump is claiming that opponents are inflating the number of Puerto Ricans, estimated to be at least 3,000, killed in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and is blaming California’s numerous deadly megafires not on global warming but bad environmental laws that prevent “readily available water”from being used against the blazes (“wingnut drivel,” the L.A. Times countered).  Dominating the headlines: devastating flooding caused by Tropical Storm Florence, which continues to affect much of North Carolina, not only coastal areas but inland, due to rivers expected to crest at record levels.  Toni and I vacationed in Kitty Hawk, NC, with Dave Goldfield when Phil was a toddler and flew into Wilmington (now virtually under water) en route to Dick and Donna Jeary’s Myrtle Beach condo 20 years later, where we learned Alissa had been born in Raleigh.

 1963 Hobart varsity basketball team; Dave Bigler, top, second from right

Alan Geller, presenter Alan Yngve, and Dave Bigler, top local pair at World Wide Bridge Contest

With Samantha Gauer’s help, I interviewed Dave Bigler at the Calumet Regional Archives.  Beforehand, Steve McShane gave him a tour of our facilities. I first met Dave when he partnered with Lynn Bayman in Chesterton.  Evidently Lynn had bid on playing with him at an Alzheimer’s fundraiser, but he has since returned to play with her several times.  A 1963 Hobart and IUN grad with a degree in Special Education, Bigler worked over 30 years at U.S. Steel.  He and four other supervisors, dubbed the Loose Cannons, when asked to trouble-shoot a thorny problem, often met at Hank and Casey’s taproom in Glen Park near the old Shaver Chevy dealership to thrash out tactics and strategy. While Bigler learned bridge from his parents at a young age and played related games in college, including euchre, bid whist, and a similar Serbian version, he didn’t take up the card game seriously until invited to join a bridge o rama in Portage.  Henceforth, in retirement he and Chuck Briggs formed a successful partnership.  Dave enjoys teaching bridge to beginners and introducing them to area games; he’s been involved in Little League baseball for almost 30 years and has been a member of the Hobart School Board since 2003.

At Hobart Lanes an opponent’s grandson ended up under a table above us and spotted the dimes and quarters I had spread out nearby for doubles and tenth-strike pots.  I spotted the rascal just as he appeared ready to make away with some coins.  Friday Toni arrived home after spending five days with sister Marianne in Granger, Indiana, visiting from Florida.  James slept over, as bowling season commenced, and I made pancakes and Polish sausage and then took him to Culver’s for lunch after his match at Inman’s.  He’s chosen Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt” for an assignment in Advanced English; I told him I’d assigned the novel in my History class on the 1920s and described the author’s other satirical best-sellers, “Main Street” and “Elmer Gantry.”  Dave spotted Ron Cohen and my new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” and noticed three photos by Guy Rhodes, his former student at E.C. Central,including an aerial shot of spectators at Marquette Park for the 2010 air show taken through the open back doors of a Golden Knights Team plane.

 above, photo by Guy Rhodes; Paul and Oz, August 2017

Toni and enjoyed Paul Kaczoha’s retirement picnic. As the invite stated, “after 48 fun filled years of working in the a steel mill, he is no longer a wage slave.”  In the garage hung a quilt made from old t-shirts bearing inscriptions (i.e., “Labor creates all wealth”) and photos of labor radicals.  We helped ourselves to delicious food, including ribs and chicken.  Toni’s salad disappeared fast, and my dill pickles from Jewel were also popular. We sat with Bill and Dorrean Carey (still active in Save the Dunes), Sue and Oz (my Wednesday lunch companion), and labor activist Alice Bush, there with son Mike Appelhans, who teaches Math at Ivy Tech. Mike met IUN Chancellor Bill Lowe at the Arts and Sciences Building dedication (the two institutions share use of the facility) and discussed the Irish revolutionary period of 100 years ago, Lowe’s academic specialty. 

I finished John Updike’s “Rabbit Remembered” with reluctance, realizing there’d be no sequels.  Harry’s offspring turned out just fine, each with characteristics inherited from him.  Son Nelson referred to death as a freeze-frame.  Grandson Roy, a computer nerd, described net-surfing in 1999 as “all Boolean logic.”  At Bucknell in 1962 a Math instructor attempted to explain (without much luck) George Boole’s nineteenth-century algebraic system wof variables based on 1 and O.  Updike referenced 1999 TV ads for Nicoderm and Secret Platinum (“strongest deodorizer you can buy without a prescription”)and the sci-fi satire “Galaxy Quest,” containing a scene where the extraterrestrial turns into an octopus when sexually excited. He compared a disappointing turn of events to a kid undressing a Barbie doll and finding no nipples nor vagina and legs that don’t bend, much less spread.

Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest; Matt Burns as Aristotle 

Although my favorite NFL teams, the Eagles and the Skins, suffered upsets, Jimbo Jammers Fantasy team kicked butt, as Ben Roethlisberger and Todd Gurley racked up a combined 67 or my 105 points.  Sports Illustrated’s Charlotte Wilder wrote about 29 year-old Matt Burns (a.k.a. Airistotle), two-time air guitar world champion who in August finished second to Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura in Oulu, Finland.  How I wish Dave and I were there at the time.  Thirty years ago, he, Jimmy Satkoski, and I won a TV in a similar contest doing “Cretin Hop” by the Ramones.  Our secret: get on and off the stage quickly.  Performances at championships last just 60-seconds and are judged on stage presence, technical merit (do contestants appear to be playing the proper notes?), and “airness,” an intangible akin to originality.  Like in roller derby, competitors assume such alter egos as Shreddy Mercury, Nordic Thunder, Hot Lixx Hulahan, and Windhammer. Burns compared the scene to drag shows, “but for frat bros.”

A September 2018 Journal of American History article by Andrew Pope titled “Making Motherhood a Felony” opened by mentioning that in 1960 Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis proposed a segregation package that would have barred black women from giving birth in the state’s charity hospitals and imprisoned women for up to one year who conceived a child out of wedlock.”  These measures failed, but lawmakers passed measures that denied the vote to women who had given birth while unmarried and prohibited AID (Aid to Dependent Children) payments to mothers who gave birth out of wedlock, lived with a man, or whom caseworkers considered “promiscuous.”   Over 98 percent of the approximately 30,000 poor people denied funds in the first few years were African American.

Elegy

      “When I look back at my life, what jumps out is how many variables had to fall in place in order to give me a chance.” J.D. Vance, “Hillbilly Elegy”

On the phone with high school classmate Gaard Murphy Logan, I told her that next month’s book club selection is 32-year-old J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” and expressed the hope that it would not be totally depressing.  I think you’re in for a disappointment, she replied.  While some critics have cited the book to help explain Trump’s appeal to rural folk estranged from establishment politicians, its primary virtue, according to reviews I’ve read, seems to be its extreme candor about being from a subculture in disintegration – poor, white Americans.  Yale Law School graduate Vance wrote: “Whatever talent I have, I almost squandered until a handful of people (some in the marine corps) rescued me.  For those of us lucky enough to live the American dream, the demons of the life we left behind continues to chase us.”  Vance’s maternal grandparents (he called them Mamaw and Papaw) left Jackson, Kentucky, after she became pregnant at age 13 and moved to Middletown, Ohio, a steel town nicknamed Middletucky because it contained so many postwar Southern transplants, who retained their rough-and-ready values and lifestyle.  Because Vance’s mother was a dysfunctional drug addict throughout most of his childhood, Mamaw and Papaw became his de facto guardians, violent and foul-mouthed but loving and loyal.

 J.D. Vance

In a section titled “The Great Regression” David Goldfield’s “The Gifted Generation” described “Hillbilly Elegy” as “a bittersweet memoir of growing up in a gritty Rust belt town in southern Ohio [that] chronicles the resentment toward neighbors who engage in welfare fraud, petty crime, and drugs – afflictions that descended on a community bereft of jobs and institutions.”  Goldfield concludes that the primary cause of the work ethic decline among those disparaged as “white trash” was not moral failure but unhealthy corporate concentration, the weakening of organized labor, and governmental neglect.  Reflecting on the loss of confidence among young people since the 1960s, Goldfield wrote:

  If mobility, both economic and geographic, characterized the [postwar] gifted generation, then the current cohort may be the Go-Nowhere Generation.  The likelihood of twentysomethings moving to another state has dropped 40 percent since the 1980s, regardless of educational level.  Young people want to remain connected to their hometowns rather than experience other parts of the country or the world.  This reflects wariness about striking out on one’s own.  The gifted generation was bold, motivated by opportunity rather than constrained by fear.  The major difference between the time the gifted generation came of age and the present is that the federal government’s role as the great umpire, the leveler, has diminished.

J.D. Vance’s early memories include visiting a dying uncle in the hospital and noticing hair on his great-grandmother’s chin while on her lap.  And this: “I was four when I climbed on top of the dining room table of our small apartment, announced that I was the Incredible Hulk, and dove headfirst into the wall to prove that I was stronger than any building. (I wasn’t.)”

Gaard Logan and I talked about earliest childhood memories.  Mine are rather traumatic, including being left at a kids party with strangers when my family visited relatives in Pittsburgh, walking into a friend’s parents’ bedroom whose mother had nothing on over her girdle, and being treated by a doctor whose therapy included prayers and rubbing my forehead soothingly.  He may have been some type of spiritual healer. I’m not sure why my mother thought it necessary to take me to him; did I have some sort of nervous tick?  She also tortured me each morning with a tablespoon of cod liver oil.   Gaard spoke of taking walks with an older sister when two or three years old to a farmhouse in rural Maine where a woman treated them to cookies and ice cold, unpasteurized milk.  Her father was a salesman of perfumes, razors, and other sundries who left for Boston on Monday morning in the family’s only car and returned late Friday.  Gaard still has traces of a Maine accent, especially when speaking about childhood experiences. I told her about Dick Hagelberg’s dad moving the family to a farm in upstate New York after working for years for a railroad and how Dick hated it.  Gaard’s recollections, on the other hand, were much more pleasant.

I spoke with Gaard’s hubby Chuck about Tiger Wood’s second place finish over the weekend in the Valspar Championship, which drew the highest TV ratings in years despite it not being a major tournament.  Tiger sank a birdie on the seventeenth hole Sunday to pull within one stroke and, needing another birdie, came close to sinking a long putt that would have put him in a playoff against winner Paul Casey.  Good stuff.

I found a promising book about Hoosier humorist David Letterman subtitled “The Last Giant of Late Night” (1027).  A fan since childhood, author Jason Zinoman wrote:

  A talk-show host who didn’t always seem to enjoy talking to people, a reserved man who spoke to millions every night, one of the most trusted entertainers whose ironic style kept emphasizing his own insincerity, Letterman represented a version of New York cool that seemed more accessible than punk singers in ripped shirts or dapper Broadway sophisticates.

Last week I didn’t feel up to bowling and got Bob Fox to sub for me. His name was chosen for a chance to win the 500-dollar mega-pot, requiring two strikes in a row.  He buried the first but missed the headpin on his second ball.  Amazingly, another pin rebounded off the back and knocked it down.  He said that after $400 went for bills, he and wife Wanda ate at a nice restaurant, leaving just $30 in his pocket.  This week, bowling for our opponents, Bob rolled a 650 series.  Lo and behold, Bob’s name was called again, and he won another hundred dollars.  Gene Clifford showed me photos of he and former IU coach Bob Knight attending a fundraiser at Bloomington South High School.  After being firing, Knight has refused to return to IU and often bad-mouths his former employer.  I mentioned Knight’s having held IU scrimmages at Gary’s Genesis Center; Clifford replied that he had attended several.

The Saturday Evening Club met at the Pines Village Retirement Community in Valparaiso.  The wife of speaker Jim Wise works there, and at least one club member lives there.  Beforehand, members asked Wise whether the site was a recruiting ploy.   The food (prime rib, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad) was excellent and the spirits plentiful.  Wise’s talk, titled “Sympathy with the Angels” (a take-off on the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy with the Devil”), dealt mostly about the history of physics and whether science and religion were compatible.  He started with quotes by Jim Morrison of the Doors, philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell, and, most germane, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s assertion that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”  Once an atheist, Wise is now a Roman Catholic who visits hospices with his comfort dog Kalberer. 

 Jim Wise and Kalberer

While much of Jim Wise’s talk was over my head, everyone was expected to comment aloud about it for about ten minutes.  I concentrated on the Fitzgerald quote, stating that while I consider myself to be an agnostic, sometimes after a close call with danger, such as barely avoiding an auto accident, I whisper thanks to whatever guardian angel (St. James?) might be watching over me.  Someone thought that sounded like Blaise Pascal’s Wager, the idea that if God does not exist, nothing is lost by believing.  Others labeled it superstition.  I brought up Jacob Riis’ maxim that optimism is the only practical working philosophy and how that gave him a sense of purpose in working to improve the environment.  Afterwards, Jim Mitchell, a former lawyer and now an ordained minister, said he appreciated my sentiments.

 John Shearer: "My Loop shirt still fits."

Steve Dahl

WLUP (The Loop) has become a Christian station, part of the Educational Media Foundation K-Love brand. Jerry Davich wrote:

In my younger years, “The Loop” wasn’t just a radio station. It was a black t-shirt movement. A brash call to action. A rebellious snarl in a world of wrinkled smiles. The station, WLUP FM 97.9, was the unruly, disobedient teenager of Chicago radio stations back in the day. The on-air personalities who called it home through the decades – Steve Dahl, Jonathan Brandmeier, Mancow Muller, to name a few – did a great job of amplifying this image of anti-establishment at any cost. Disco Demolition Night at Comisky Park on July 12, 1979, was a call to arms for my generation of impressionable rock-n-rollers. The ballpark held 50,000 fans, but thousands more stormed the field to take part in it. I always regretted I wasn’t one of them.

Then Davich added, egregiously, in my opinion: “I rarely listened to the station in recent years. Whenever I stumbled onto The Loop in my car, it felt like bumping into an old high school classmate who never grew up.”  Like me, Davich’s channel of choice is WXRT, several of whose on-air personalities, including Johnny Mars and Frank E. Lee, earned their stripes at The Loop. While I treasure the variety of music on XRT, I see no reason to disparage folks who enjoy rockin’ out on the car radio.  For that I still have WLS.  I loved Steve Dahl and would still listen to him.  Mancow, on the other hand, was obnoxious.  Brenden Bayer posted: “Just got in the car to hear WLUP’s new format.  This is bullshit.”  You know it, baby.

 Wirt principal Marcus Muhammad with Jerry Davich

In another Post-Tribune column Jerry Davich wrote about the demise of his 75-year-old high school alma mater, named after Gary’s world famous progressive school superintendent, William A. Wirt:

I went for my final tour of Wirt High School in Miller today before it closes for good after this school year.  I had nostalgic feelings while getting lost in the halls, finding my old locker, hiding from teachers, and staring out at the old track where I still own the school record for the longest time to run a mile. Ah, good times.  It was as if the school is on its death bed and I dropped by to say one last goodbye before its faint pulse stops beating. Ah, sad times.

Alan Yngve being interviewed at the Calumet Regional Archives; photo by Samantha Gauer;

Archives display in IUN's library/conference center lobby; photo by Christina Gomez

At Chesterton Y, Dee Van Bebber and I finished with a 53.17 percent (slightly above average) despite not playing our best bridge.  On the final hand, I held 18 high card points, including Ace, King, Queen, Jack of Spades, and opened one No Trump.  Sally Will doubled, Dee passed, and Rich bid two Clubs.  I went 2 Spades, mainly to alert Dee what to lead on defense.  Sally raised to 3 Clubs, Dee bid 3 Spades and all passed.  When she lay down her hand, she had no high card points but 5 little Spades and 2 doubletons.  I made the bid for high board by throwing off a loser on a good Diamond.  I gave copies of my new Steel Shavings to Alan Yngve, Dottie Hart, and Helen Booth.  Noticing Richard Hatcher’s photo on the cover, Helen said that on several occasions she spoke to students in his Valparaiso Law School class, and in 1992 he supported her over George Van Til to be a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in New York where Bill Clinton was nominated to run for President.

In the 2005 issue of the Prairie Writers Guild literary magazine From the Edge of the Prairie is “Life’s Flight” by William Dallner, written shortly before he died in 2007:

Awakening-

The testing of wing,

The first bold leap

Soaring to heights.

Achievements above all, recognition of many,

Resentment of few.

The weakening pace,

Descending shortness of breath,

Falling,

Revival, fresh air.

The landing with dignity, the telling and re-telling from memory,

To the end.

On this, the hundredth anniversary of World War I, I came upon this elegy by Hoosier Dale T. Sheets, who died 7 years ago at age 91, describing a visit to Verdun:

The clover of Verdun is a blanket of green

over the iron turrets and the concrete bunkers,

except for an open mouth of a cave where men

sought shelter from the whining shells, and found

poison gas instead.  The field’s so near to Paris

that taxis shuttled soldiers to and from the front,

where a million soldiers died.

. . .

I fall face downward in the sweet clover

And press my body through time and space

Into the cold and bloody trenches of Verdun.

Out there somewhere, forlornly sounds

My cabbie on his horn, impatient to be gone.